8/21/17 The man whose alleged threats against postal workers led to a two-month-long mail stoppage for three blocks of West Wabash Avenue was charged with harassment and then released from custody without having to post bail.
He will be tried on the felony charges in November.
Gregory Huston, 62, is accused of threatening to kill a U.S. Postal Service employee who delivered mail to residents along a route in the Garland-Shadle neighborhood that included Huston.
The June threat was the most recent in a series of threatening actions that two postal workers claim stretch back to October 2016, according to court documents. Huston repeatedly sought out mail carriers on his block and would spit at them, curse, and threaten to kill them, the postal workers claim.
Huston apparently believed that the postal workers had made his mother cry, which she denied to police, and he thought his mail delivery had been stopped for personal reasons. He also told police officers that he has had a grudge toward the post office since, he said, a postal worker had made fun of his disabled father, the documents say. source:
A breakdown in communications
Upon realizing he wasn’t getting his mail, Denny Craig headed down to the Shadle-Garland post office, where he said an employee informed him that mail delivery had been stopped to his area and that the post office had sent a notice by mail to make him aware of this. Bewildered, Craig said he hadn’t received such a notice. He soon found that the notice was tucked in among his mail – mail that was no longer being delivered to his home.
USPS spokesman Swanson said that typically a supervisor would deliver such notices to the affected homes, but he is not sure if that happened in this case.
If delivery to an area becomes impossible, USPS then tries to install what are known as cluster boxes, or a collection of mailboxes, at a central location on the block, Swanson said. Postal employees approached several residents about installing the boxes in front of their properties, but all declined.
The final solution that USPS can offer are free post office boxes, where residents can have their mail addressed, Swanson said.
Residents complain that USPS has not asked them for feedback about these options, each of which they said present problems. a two-month-long mail stoppage
give it a break Snard…it is always something that someone does wrong that makes everyone pay. disrespect tops that list and it just keeps getting better from there. mismanaging beaureacrats? you must be a USPSworker. you are too disgruntled to be an everyday Joe Coffee. here is how it is…people complain; they send someone out. if they validate it, they tell you what their plan of action is. if it is 3 months of mail suspension, so be it…but that is pretty severe. also, just fyi..if your mail box is NOT where it should be..don’t look for mail. there are requirements for mail boxes. check them out. Good Luck. Listen to these Carriers they know what they speak!!!!!
If anybody expects a city or rural carrier to continually have to put up with harassment and even death threats from anybody on any route, they are mistaken and unreasonable. I have had my share in my three + decades of having to deliver to some real dimwitted assholes. I’ve been threatened, cussed out, harassed by teen agers and kids while their idiot parent or parents just stood there like a zombie. And these people expect us to come back begging for more!
There should have probably been a better effort here in notifying other customers who were without mail because of this one jerk. But it isn’t easy – some people let their mail go for weeks without picking it up and then have a fit because the box is jammed up and the carrier takes it back to the office and files a “moved, left no address” order. What the hell else is that carrier supposed to think?
Punk asses vandalize boxes and people blame the carrier for not delivering mail when there is no box to deliver to, and no box at the front door! Drivers back into boxes, knock them on the ground on a busy street and customers can’t understand why a carrier won’t get out of the LLV and stoop on the ground because the customer doesn’t put the mail on hold until they can get the box repaired or replaced.
Universal free mail delivery is a privilege. But like all privileges, abuse them and you can expect to lose them. If you want to be a jerk and harass your letter carrier, you not only can see your mail service stopped, you can cause your neighbor’s mail to be halted too, and if you keep it up or threaten a carrier, you can get busted and charged with a felony crime. I hope this idiot in this article is found guilty and does some time and get a hefty fine to boot. Screwing around with postal employees is a stupid thing to do.
piss off a 3 block radius of customers over one delivery point…..boy these postal mismanaging bureaucrats without college educations are truly legends in their own minds. instead of WE DELIVER their motto should be A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT.